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Vice Blog

FICTION - JOCKO WEYLAND

Jocko Weyland edits and publishes the picture-heavy (that's a good thing) zine Elk and writes for a bunch of fancier and more respectable publications than us. He also wrote a really awesome book a few years ago called The Answer is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World. These days he's been focusing on these extremely tiny stories that are like little fictionalized nuggets of reality. They're great. We had two of them in last year's Fiction Issue and thought it'd be a really good time to run a bunch of them here as a respite from all the true stuff. So look for a new one every couple of weeks. Here's the first two…

Swell Toffs

This woman Mirabelle used to go out with someone I know, I only met her a couple of times but she was this tall pretty striking woman who wore those high heeled strappy shoes, Manolo Blahnik I'm sure, overly belled pants all shiny sort of a modern harem bloomers, expensive blouses and jingling jewelry. From the trying to be casual but every article of clothing costs $500, my hair just got done for another $400 and I'll see in you in The Hamptons this weekend collection. An uptown look trying to hip and it ends up this 42nd Street look, specifically the Conde Nast building, and even more specifically the floors of that building where Vogue magazine has its offices. The epicenter for that style, or more precisely that complete and total lack of style. And lo and behold, this woman worked at Vogue magazine. What a surprise. And was English, so she had this annoying posh accent that sort of veered toward the fake and/or Anglo-American upbringing dialect called "Mid-Atlantic." She gallivanted around with Dukes and Squires and all those swell toffs and the people who love them, and – no conflict of interest here – you'd see her picture in the Vogue party pages. Barely knew her as I said, but did encounter her enough to pick up on what's being reported here. Anyway a couple years after they broke up I mentioned to my friend that I saw Slayer the night before and they were great, people completely losing it, going crazy, so loud and yeah it was awesome. "Slayer?" I don't think he knew much about them, sounded like he was on uncertain ground. "I remember Mirabelle and her friends all went to see Slayer." "What?" "Yeah she was into Slayer" and God I could just see her and her parvenu gadfly friends on the balcony looking down at the unwashed masses slamming below. "Oh I  loooooooveeee Slayer."  I could just hear it and it made me squirm. Fuck them; I love Slayer, yeah right. Couldn't really listen to Slayer for a while after that.

Luke Johnson

At the Blue Lady this bar a little bit down from the White Castle one night one of those nights you're so pissed at the world so mad you can't talk just numb with rage sitting at the bar can barely order and keep your composure, just stare straight ahead drink the beer with one hand the whiskey with the other nobody talk to me. Looking at that stupid face in the mirror behind the bar it's yours and it won't go away, and nobody talk to me because I'm liable to snap. But of course the loud guy, you know the one, he's two stools away by himself talking loudly to the bartender his voice raising above the rest that talkative annoying banter. Don't look my way, don't talk to me but you know it's only a matter of minutes before he leans your direction and starts. A white guy wearing a Kangol cap. Barely got through half the beer when he says hey whatcha drinking there, whiskey? Jameson's? That's good stuff and away we go God if he'd only leave me alone but no he's just non-stop hammering away at me from his stool, leaning in closer. For some reason snowboarding comes up, not that I brought it up, he did and oh yeah snowboarding and skating he grew up with some skaters, "My friend Frankie" yeah he's a pro skater but we grew up together out on the island. "Frankie Gerwer?" "Oh yeah Frankie he was always skating and then he moved away I guess he's a big deal now huh?" He said his name was Luke Johnson and the funny thing was I remembered Frankie saying he stayed by the White Castle once with his friend Mike so I guess this Luke Johnson was telling the truth. "Last time I saw Frankie was at a rave he had Kiss makeup on and we smoked angel dust together." "Uh-huh" and then Luke was off to the races now that he had established this Frankie Gerwer connection the funniest part of it was he just took it in stride as if it was perfectly normal that some guy at the bar would know Frankie Gerwer. He was working as a doorman in some fancy uptown building, and he'd almost OD'd on Special K. His mother came to the hospital and thought he was dead crying her eyes out and after that he found Jesus and stopped doing drugs, his girlfriend helped him find Jesus so now he was on the straight and narrow because he didn't want to go out like that. But five minutes later he started asking me if I knew who the coke connection was in the bar and when he went to the bathroom I slid off my stool and escaped Luke Johnson.